Campaign finance regulation

Of all the serial derangements of the left, the one that is most out of proportion is the fanaticism about the Citizens United decision. I call it “Citizens United Derangement Syndrome,” or CUDS. This week as you know we saw the nearly unprecedented disruption of the Supreme Court by a handful of losers protesting Citizens United. I’m betting not a one of them has actually read the opinion, or indeed »

Way back in January I wrote over at Forbes about how the Democrats have become the party of the rich: If you brought back either of the Roosevelts—Teddy or Franklin—from the grave, the most astonishing thing they would find is that the “malefactors of great wealth” have become the benefactors of today’s liberalism, and Democrats have become the party of the rich. In the economic crisis of the 1930s, the »

The other day in “Less, Lesser, Lessig” we outlined the embarrassment that is Harvard’s Larry Lessig and his super-ironic strategy of having a super-PAC to end all super-PACs. We noted that this media/academic diva was suddenly clamming up on his Mayday PAC election faceplant. Now he’s out with a defense of his strategy, as reported on recode.net, which notes: Not surprisingly, the Harvard Law professor got a tad upset earlier in »

If Tom Steyer has a rival as the biggest loser from the Democratic funder/advocate class in this election, it has to be Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the most puffed-up pompous professor among the many prodigious pomposities who inhabit Harvard. Lessig is a famous scold of campaign spending, whose solution (like nearly all academic solutions) would conveniently empower people like himself. Lessig deplores money in politics, and set out in this election »

Two left-wing groups, MoveOn and Mayday.US, sponsored a video contest to highlight the “problem” of money in politics. They published the videos that were submitted on a web site, and encouraged viewers to vote for the best one. Sadly, their effort was nowhere near as successful as the Power Line Prize competition of a couple of years ago. They got one really good entrant, produced by American Commitment, which focused »

Michelle Malkin hosted the documentary “Rocky Mountain Heist” (trailer above) telling the story of the Democratic takeover of Colorado via a quartet of liberal millionaires and billionaires — known as the “Gang of Four” — in the course of a decade. Something there is that doesn’t love the documentary. Something there is that would love to erect a wall blocking the documentary before the upcoming elections. Michelle writes in her »

American Commitment has claimed victory in the contest sponsored by far-left MoveOn and MAYDAY.US. Announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” The public was invited to vote on the contest entries. The public has spoken: American Commitment, a national advocacy organization committed to free markets and limited government, easily won the vote in »

Our friend Hugh Hewitt publicized the adage If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat. Like “the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible,” in the lyrics Ira Gershwin gave to Sportin’ Life, “it ain’t necessarily so.” If it’s not close, they can still cheat. Consider the video contest sponsored by far-left MoveOn and MAYDAY.US. Announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up »

This is hilarious: Scott wrote here about a video contest sponsored by far-left MoveOn and MAYDAY.US. Announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” The public could vote on the contest entries. The conservative group American Commitment took MoveOn at its word. They made this terrific video about Tom Steyer, the biggest hypocrite on »

The conservative advocacy group American Commitment has entered a national video contest organized by the left-wing outfits MoveOn and MAYDAY.US. What’s going on here? Bear with me. In an email announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” In its call for submissions, MoveOn declared: “The scale of the problem is clear. The corporate »

I never much cared for the political analysis of Thomas Bryne Edsall, nowadays of the New York Times—especially his book Chain Reaction, which helped to launch today’s popular leftist narrative that conservatism is just racism and . . . well, just racism. I did meet him person once and found him more congenial and engaging than I expected. Today in the Times he asks “Are Liberals Fund-Raising Hypocrites?”, and pretty »

That is the title of this excellent video by Tea Party Nation, which exposes the Democratic Party’s “dark money” networks and the epic hypocrisy of Democratic politicians like Harry Reid. We also appreciate the Power Line citations in the video: »

Today, Harry Reid justified the partial repeal of the First Amendment on the ground that it is necessary to keep “dark money” out of politics. This makes no sense, of course, since the Democrats’ proposed Constitutional amendment gives Congress the power to ban or limit all spending on politics, “dark” or otherwise. But, as we have pointed out repeatedly, the Democrats love “dark money,” as long as it is spent »

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s diatribes against the Koch brothers on the floor of the Senate might be evidence of certifiable insanity if anyone took them seriously. But the attitude of the mainstream media, to the extent one can be detected, is ho-hum. The fact that no moderately well informed citizen of sound mind takes Reid’s diatribes seriously should be news all by itself. Reid renders his diatribes on the »

Someone–possibly an attendee, possibly a member of the hotel staff–audio taped a Koch-sponsored conference that was held in California last June. This, I take it, was one of the twice-a-year seminars that Koch puts on, by invitation, for conservative donors and others. Three Republican Senate candidates, Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner, participated in a panel titled “The Senate: A Window of Policy Opportunity for Principled Leaders.” Whoever recorded »

We wrote here about the Democrats’ effort to clamp down on 501(c)(4) organizations–the only entities where Republicans raise more money than Democrats–by requiring such groups to disclose their donors. They have proposed the DISCLOSE Act, which would require such disclosure of 501(c)(4)s, but not of 501(c)(3)s–where the Left is strong–or unions. In the linked post, I wrote about the fact that a hearing on the DISCLOSE Act was scheduled today »

Don’t miss John’s post on the Democrats’ ongoing efforts to drive conservatives out of politics. Next door in Wisconsin we have an example in small of the Democrats’ skullduggery, combining the use of campaign finance regulation, a lawless witch hunt by partisan prosecutors conducting a John Doe investigation and the possible connivance of the state’s Government Accountability Board (i.e., the regulatory agency enforcing the state’s campaign finance law). The victims »